i recently acquired a dell power edge 300SC
it is running dual PIII's at 800 megahertz.
any way i go to boot it up and is says that main and slave IDE drives are missing.
it then gives me an option to continue. "hit F1 to continue"
i hit F1 and it boots normally. windows XP.
then when i go to access the C drive " main hard disk"
it has a big X instead of the normal icon.
i click on it and it goes to the drive.

Im confused as to why this would be happening. are my cables not seated propoly?
is my drive going out?
what?

some one please help.

Yes in all probabilities it has something to do with your cables.Is your hard disk SATA or Baracudda.They both have different cable configurations.So when you connect them read the manual carefully.It could be that you have inserted the cable in the wrong place.